


A Sentimentality For the Past

by RectifiedPear



Category: Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Genre: Dogs, Nostalgia, Post-Canon, possible oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 18:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17606309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RectifiedPear/pseuds/RectifiedPear
Summary: Two collars lay buried.





	A Sentimentality For the Past

Everyone had left. The creaking of metal and the ripping of upholstery as bits of furniture scraped together and rolled down the heap, one he'd pulled free of and shaken into where it had once been. The hollow emptiness of silence as everyone had left became a pulse of anger thrumming within the male's body. He'd seen them come and go, peeing on the fence when they arrived, and never marking it again when they left.

It was a new wakening pain to have all of them leave at once, one that filled in with anger. He'd made an error bringing a puppy in, Angel had been his for a long time, some toy dog looking cute, 'forever puppies' humans called them. He'd grown up a long time ago.

Angel had not.

Buster's tongue licked his wounded leg, a gash that bled when he moved it too much, but nothing that would stop him from living. 

In isolation, he'd begun 'redecorating', and many things had fallen down, but more had begun to be built up. He'd lost more than half his dogs before, Tramp leaving had destroyed the original structure they'd held before. Two alpha males ruled better than one alone. _Then one left for a collared prissy bag of fur and bones._ He'd seen Tramp's Lady, long before he'd met his kid. Both sightings were now but agony. 

Had Tramp stayed for kids alone? Or had there been more to it?

Collars and homes were never guaranteed, people grew up, pets grew ugly, pets grew bored. A house and a yard. Ha! The Tramp must be miserable. That's what he'd thought at first. A street dog who ran everything and could outsmart anyone, tethered in the yard? Misery.

But Tramp had smiled.

Least for a long time.

Buster shoved detritus aside, and began to dig into the ground, sniffing from place to place in search. _Bet the kid will come back._ He knew households didn't manage with one dog, let alone two, then four more, now Angel was another. They were buried in dogs, it was bound to come that one day they were re-homed. _Or dis-homed!_

Beneath the soil laid a long strip of fabric, tough, like jerky, it had teeth marks upon it, and beside it was an older one. Barrels creaked in the junkyard, he eyed wooden boxes and de-fluffed mattresses. Several had their springs jutting out. 

Hissing from the throb in his leg, his anger renewed as he kicked the hole's contents. Throwing his head back, Buster let out a monstrous cry, teeth bared in fury.

“Thought we were a team!” 

The noise bounced off everything around him, echoing back, taunting him. He licked his wound, nuzzled bruises upon his body and ego, then found a soft sofa half rotted to lay upon. 

“Buster's trouble is Buster's trouble.”

_But used to be, it wasn't._

In between the smell of mildew and bugs, his nose could faintly pick up the smell of Tramp still, of him, his son. Scamp's smell meant little now, but Tramp's, it took him down a path he had been avoiding for a long time.

Buster remembered.

A time before Scamp or Tramp's Lady.


End file.
